So I went and got myself a new toy today — Apple’s iSight webcam. I haven’t done a ton of playing with it so far, but from what I have done, it’s quite the nifty little addition to my arsenal of toys.
The packaging is up to Apple’s usual standards of excellence. The box unfolds in half to reveal all the pieces: the iSight itself, a plastic carrying case, and three types of stands (one for sticking to the top of a CRT, one for sticking to the back of an LCD screen, and one for clipping to the top of a PowerBook). A FireWire cable is included, packaged underneath the camera.
Setting it up is incredibly simple — plug it in. Instantly, iChat recognizes it, and you’re ready to go!
I didn’t have anyone online who I could test a two-way video chat with, but I was able to test a one-way video chat (me broadcasting, them receiving) with audio going both directions, and it worked fine. The iSight has a microphone built in, so no extra cables or pieces are required to get the audio portion of the chat working.
After playing with iChat for a bit, I bounced into Yahoo! Messenger for a few moments. While Y!M doesn’t have anywhere near the speed or quality that iChat does, and doesn’t support voice chat on the Mac, it was able to recognize the iSight and allow for video/text chatting with other Y!M users without a hitch.
All in all, I’m quite impressed. It may not be the most practical toy that I could have picked up — especially with so few other iChat/iSight users in my sphere of influence at the moment — but it’ll be quite handy to have around at those times when I can take advantage of it.